Allor walked through Canto’s quarters. He felt the loss of his sister more than that of his mother. They had grown together, learned many lessons together. He could feel the missing. He looked at the heads in jars she had lining the entry.
He called out to the guards in the hallway. “Remove these heads and bury them,” he instructed the two guards.
“Yes, Lord God Allor,” replied the smaller of the two.
Allor took the remedium from his robe. He cursed it for its limitations then put it back inside of his robe. He walked to the main temple. It was nothing like he intended it to be. As he approached the cusp of his dream, it had turned bad. His family was gone. And he could only think of one thing that would help him deal with his loss.
The old man came up to him on crutches.
“I broke it four hundred eighty-three revs ago. It should have healed better than it has. I tried to give it every chance. But I’ve got to eat, so I have to drive the wagons.”
“It’s OK, sir. Let’s see if we can make it better,” said Allor as he began to run the remedium along the length of the old man’s leg.
They could see movement of his skin at the location of the broken bone. It didn’t take long before the old man was standing on his own again. He did a little dance to prove it was healed.
“Let me check the rest of you,” said Allor.
“It was just my leg. I’m fine otherwise.”
“Then let my machine prove you right. It will only take a few tox.”
“If that’s what my god tells me to do, then I will,” replied the old man as he sat on the bench again.
His arteries were cleaned of obstructions. A rash on an arm was cured. Then Allor got to the old man’s head. The remedium took a long time, much longer than usual. It found and corrected a small tumor.
“Stop it,” said the old man as Allor saw the final green indicator. The old man got up from the bench and moved away from Allor quickly.
“What was that?” he demanded.
“What was what?” asked Allor.
“That thing, it’s done things in my head.”
“What sort of things?” asked Allor.
“I know things now. Things I didn’t know before. Things without being taught.”
“Like what?” asked Allor.
“The Congress of Planets in 3417 PE (Primus Earth Years) included both economic and gender role slavery to the Prohibition on Slavery. They were subsequently included in the contact criteria. Are these things in my head true?”
“Yes, I believe they are true.”
“If the things in my head are true, then there is one more thing that must also be true,” said the man.
“What is that?” asked Allor.
“You are not a god,” replied the old man.
“That too is true,” said Allor. His words caused a murmur among the people around them. A god had just admitted to not being a god. This was a moment they would not forget.
“Then why are we told to worship you?” asked the man.
“It was easier to bring together a planet under a political and religious ruler than simply a political one,” replied Allor.
“Napoleon Bonaparte would disagree with you.”
“Who?” asked Allor.
“You haven’t given yourself the same knowledge you gave me?”
“No, I didn’t know what it was doing until now. I knew it helped a mentally defective man become normal. But you have shown me the extent of the healing. What does it feel like?”
“I am still the same man. But I’m not. My personality is the same. But the things I know now makes clear that many of the things I was sure of are false. I wish my wife were still alive so that I could apologize to her.”
A messenger from Pens came to him.
“Pens requests your assistance in Port Newton. There is some resistance from a group of Ceros priests. They are in a cave with believers that refuse conversion,” said the woman wearing the red robe of The Expected.
“Tell Pens I am needed here,” replied Allor.
“Yes, Lord God Allor,” she said, and walked briskly away.
Since the death of Tal, Pens argued that Allor should spend less time healing and more time ruling. Allor refused to give up the only work he cherished, the only thing worth doing, the vital thing needed to progress his plan.
Allor picked up the remedium. He looked at it for a moment, then took a deep breath and held it to his head.
Do you remember when you learned the 2+2=4? Most of us don’t. Allor felt like that, but now imagine if it were millions upon millions of facts. The flood of new information was overwhelming, and Allor put his hand out to steady himself. He knew of the attempt to blow up the English Parliament on Earth 5. He knew of the Mission of Mercy on Piksol. He had used the reader to understand as much as he could, but without a frame of reference it was difficult to assimilate the knowledge. It happened when he got to something called physics. The reader had assumed a basic understanding of the new term. Allor was missing that. But now he understood. Now he knew a term called mass and how it differed from weight.
When he finished, he sat down for a moment. The crowd of people waiting to be healed came closer. His guards kept them several maatars from him. Allor’s mind was racing. And with the new knowledge came a new realization of the potential to use the remedium to accelerate progress towards meeting contact criteria.
Allor motioned for the guards to let the next person through to him. As he fixed the child’s eyesight and broken fingers, he thought about threshold models of collective behaviors and the best methods of reaching the threshold. He turned off the information transfer for the child. He would only use it on adults. He handed the child a gold coin when he finished.